1. Technical Field
The invention is related to on-line, network-based learning systems, and more particularly to a system and process for providing a distributed, interactive, multimedia lecture that employs high quality, low latency audio/video links over a multicast network (such as Internet2), an interactive slideshow that allows annotations to be added by both the presenter and lecture participants, a question management feature that allows participants to submit questions and receive answers during the lecture or afterwards, and a complete archiving of the data streams and metadata associated with the foregoing features.
2. Background
The integration of wireless, distributed technology into the classroom has only just begun. To date this effort has primarily focused this technology at imitating the traditional classroom lecture environment. Only now are new models for advancing education based on a new generation of interactive technologies beginning to be explored. New methods for immersive hands-on learning, learning by doing, and interactive collaboration portend an evolution in classroom instruction. Technology today is opening new horizons for expanding the learning process. With recent advances in conferencing, network technologies, computer hardware and visualization technologies, a new frontier for advancing the human learning process is opening up. The quest should include researching and prototyping pedagogically sound technologies that offer educators an advantage in using the exponential raw power of emerging hardware and software. The key is to integrate modern learning methods (especially active based learning methods) into scalable software designs and build reliable software that uses emerging communication, collaboration, and integrative programming solutions.
Further, learner centric technologies must be created which shift away from solely lecture-based environments with pen and paper assessment. This shift to a learning-centric perspective will require instructors and their institutions not only to share traditional content resources in online formats, but to support enriched collaborative learning environments that can transform today's online page turning courses into opportunities to increase the learning outcomes of instruction.
The underbelly of integrating information and communication technology into the classroom is the ability to capture the learner's experience and provide adequate feedback and response. This vision requires the development of technologies that encourage immersion and exponentially engage the user in multiple activities, capturing both implicit and explicit knowledge interactions. It is the preamble of learning by doing and capturing the learning experience for personalizing education that may dominate the best designs.
There will also be a need to integrate technology into the collective learning experience, spanning beyond the initial experience in grades K-12, through university education through industrial education and into lifelong learning. Learning environments must reach beyond the school walls and directly into the home and workplace. Continuous learning for working adults requires technologies that support alternative delivery of educational programs.
Given the rapid advances in hardware and software development, the world's universities are currently developing compelling new learning environments for education. CPU power advances have already provided unprecedented computational power for problem formulation and solution presentation. Graphics power has enriched the experience and aided in visualizing concepts. Storage and networking have enabled digital libraries, instant communication, and wireless classrooms. Having come this far with current technological capability, imagine what this kind of power will enable for 21st century scholarship and academics. It will connect people together in unique ways, help manage complex problem based learning environments; bring federated resources together for analysis, synthesis and interaction. It will facilitate the creation of connected learning communities.
But the desired rich collaborative experiences, pedagogically sound technology integration, embedded assessment, shared internet based laboratories, rich video conferencing technology, immersive constructive environments, and even a methodology for integrating technology into the classroom that is not disruptive, nor socially handicapped, has yet to be achieved.
While 97 percent of teachers have access to some computer technology today, only 32 percent are integrating computers in classroom learning. Introducing technology into the classroom is one thing, introducing it effectively is another. Too much effort has been concentrated on recreating the classroom, rather than using wireless distributed technology to extend the classroom, making instruction more flexible for the learner, the mentor and the instructor, while focusing on the experience of learning.
Traditional classrooms today fall short of providing sound education because they lack the flexibility to create a scaleable environment in which the students continually practice their art. In fact, most instruction today, reiterates teacher centric presentation models, videotaping the instructor with either Mylar or a slide presentation as a presentation mechanism, while students take notes on paper or computers. In addition, the interaction models are slow-paced and repetitive, hardly challenging to the “twitch speed generation” who are used to navigating both visual and textual data as rapidly as star fighters. Usually, in most learning environments, the teacher lectures, the student interrupts occasionally to ask a few questions, and dialogue is usually minimal, unless class size is restricted. Students read textbooks and work on textually based problems. Teacher office hours are the only way to talk to the faculty member or teaching assistant. Assessment is comprised of tests with long feedback loops or long lines waiting to get into laboratories.
Industry hasn't really achieved great gains in e-technologies for learning either. They have designed similar teacher centric electronic, distance learning environments, using lecture based technologies as the design model. E-learning applications in industry still focus primarily on the instructor as the active participant, and the learner as the passive participant. They have encouraged presence awareness but only simulate learner passivity. Tools for interacting with the instructor or each other are extremely limited. They are not designing e-learning systems to meet the skills required for problem solving in work environments.
Thus, neither university, nor industry has utilized the technology yet to enable the workforce to enhance their skills for employability.
To correct the shortcomings of existing technology-based learning systems, a set of core technologies is needed for building high bandwidth and optimal bandwidth learning services. The core technologies must include video conferencing capabilities that represent a vast improvement over existing systems. Low latency video grid conferencing is needed to allow for enriched immersion in a lecture based environments across multiple venues. Imagine being able to see live lectures and live learner and instructor interactions in those lectures across multiple learning environments. This visually immersive conferencing technology should be designed for ease of use, with rich educational experience, and scalability. It should also accommodate the use of new portable computing devices such as wireless PocketPCs and TabletPCs. In addition, it should include a simple, configurable archival system enabling individual participants to record and playback conferences and student and teacher interactions.
This technology should be designed and architected to be very scalable; from a single-machine deployment for small conferences and personal nodes, up to large, group-to-group-to-group conference scenarios, relying on simple software installation and hardware configuration.
The aim is to point the technology at collaborative working groups over real-time protocols meeting in classrooms, conferences, workspaces, in the field, etc. and couple it with wireless technologies for accessing federated scholarly data anywhere, anytime. A set of learning services could be built that address the pedagogical needs of the various users in the learning experience around conferencing technology, including the student, instructor, teaching assistant/mentor. The use of portable wireless computing devices such as the TabletPC will facilitate the creation of a more project based environment that allows students to move around, receive instruction, aggregate project work, integrate with others and take notes in their normal handwriting.
Thus, video conferencing technologies do not have to simply imitate the lecturer standing in front of the class. Instead, they can be used as a way of participating in a classroom, or in a conference room, the field, or a laboratory, virtually anywhere learning happens. When used effectively, the use of collaborative technology suggests that significant gains in student achievement will be achieved. For example, it has been found that students who viewed videotaped university-level lectures in an active discussion group performed half a grade-level better than those who attended the lectures in person.
The student experience must enhance the student's ability to communicate and collaborate. In lectures, students need to be able to interact with the content either during presentation or during reflection and review.
The instructor experience must focus on several requirements: active presentations, individual assignments, assessment, and group formation. Active presentation learning services provide delivery and feedback between faculty presentation and student response. For example, students should be able to write directly on presentations slide applications during student/teacher interactions, or during review of materials. Teachers should be able to receive this feedback either real time or post lecture and make adjustments to their instruction, to their materials or to their student's learning behavior.
The technology-based learning system should also accommodate for the classroom, for the conference room, for the single PC, laptop, PocketPC, TabletPC or any emerging device. In order for education to persist through lifelong learning, the Internet becomes the central repository of content, the warehouse of interactions with the content, the communication medium for interacting together, and the virtual learning environment—a kind of new school room.
A computer network-based, interactive, multimedia learning system and process in accordance with the present invention is a key step in the ultimate achievement of the foregoing vision.